


Band-aid

by Mary_the_gardener



Category: Figure Skating RPF
Genre: Angst, Gen, Pain, Self Confidence Issues, Torino 2006 Winter Olympics, Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-28
Updated: 2019-08-28
Packaged: 2020-09-28 15:14:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,249
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20428037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mary_the_gardener/pseuds/Mary_the_gardener
Summary: The music is about to start.But all Caro wants is to go home.





	Band-aid

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write something sad, I though about a few things from the last couple of seasons, but then this came into my mind, and I just couldn't avoid it.  
I couldn't find her whole programs at Vancouver, so this is based on a few snippets and an interview, I hope I didn't mess up!

She skids to a stop at the centre of the ice, getting ready to take her position.

She tries to concentrate, focus only on what she has to do, but there is only one thought in her head. One thought and it's not the right one, it's not what she should be thinking about right now and she doesn't know how to make it go away.

She just wants to go home.

She doesn't want to be here, on the ice, the eyes of everyone fixed on her. All of them expecting her to climb up from the seventh place of a not quite perfect short program.

Expecting her to show the real champion that's inside, to mend what happened four years ago.

The music is about to start, she knows it, but she can't stop the memories from flashing into her mind: stroking across the rink, diagonally from one end to the other, almost flying, getting so much speed she was sure she would fly high and land her triple flip-triple toeloop like butter, and then it was time, she turned but couldn't stop that speed, all too fast, getting launched in the hair so fast, rotating so fast and then crashing down equally fast, so much she barely had the time to put one hand on the ice to avoid crashing her face on it. She somehow managed to put that one hand down, her face didn't crash. But all the rest did. She got up, already used to skate through the pain of a nasty fall, but her hopes were in a thousand broken pieces, her concentration shattered. She tried to keep going, hours on hours of hard training helping her body to go through the right motions even if her focus was elsewhere; in a corner of her mind the fact that she needed to turn her next jump into a combo tried to get through, but she couldn't grasp on it, her mind already spiralling, too busy trying to keep herself together enough to do what she had tried in training again and again. Too busy fighting to keep out the thoughts of all the people sitting in the arena, her people, who placed their hopes on her and who she just let down.

That single broken jump, that one failed combo, was the beginning and already the end of her first olympic experience.

Now she's here again.

And she wishes she wasn't.

She wishes she could just close her eyes and open them to find it's all over already.

She wants to go home, sit by the fireplace cuddling Alex while roasting chestnuts.

She feels so tired. Off. Scared.

She's seen Carrol walking away from the boards without even waiting for her to take her starting position. What if someone else saw that? What if they notice it. What if they understand that she's a fraud. A failure. That he barely glances at her, a girl that couldn't even win italian nationals.

What if they all find her secret, will they all laugh at her for going all the way to America for nothing? To be treated like a no one.

She has to put her hand down on her first jump.

What will her federation think, they who paid it all? That they paid him to barely say hi to her? And what will they think of her? That she lied to them all, that she hid the truth, too ashamed to confess how small he made her feel, how inadequate, hopeless?

That's how she feels now, as she comes crashing hard on the ice: all her right side screams in pain as she gets up straight away, she doesn't even know how. She keeps going, just because that's what she's been thought to do since she was a little child. But she feels lost.

She knows she shouldn't but, as she glides across the ice, mechanically going through her transitions, December is what she sees, it's like her thoughts have a will of their own. She's back in Brescia as she steps out of her combination, as she stumbles coming out of her double axel, falling hard on her knees, as she sits down and hears that she's second, behind Valentina. She's on her plane back to California, incapable of sleeping because of the thoughts that keep worrying her, because of the fear that she may not even get to Vancouver and it will be all her fault, because she doesn't really want to know what is waiting for her at El Segundo.

She falls again, just losing her balance and landing hard on her butt.

And as she slowly gets up, she just wants to cry, but she can't. Right now she doesn't even remember how she won at europeans. But she did, and they unloaded all their hopes on her. They gave her their trust, that one single place - just one, and that was her fault too - leaving Valentina at home. Valentina, who maybe deserved it more than her, to have her own chance at the Olympics too, while she, Carolina, already had hers back then, on home turf even.

She feels she's not just a fraud: she's a thief too, robbing someone else dream just to shatter it on the ice.

Like she does, hitting on it for the third time, hard and painful, two-footing her jump and then stumbling on her own skates.

She can barely get up, keep going. Because one has to finish no matter what.

But it does matter, all the things that they will write, that they will say; she can already picture the videos of her falls on the news, adorned by some scorning pun, for all the nation to hear and see. It's the only thing that rings in her ear, she doesn't even hear the music anymore, as she skates and skates till she can finally hit her pose.

But she can barely hold it, the weight of all those broken expectations falling on her like an avalanche of stones: she can't help but bend down under that loan, hiding her face behind her hands, hiding her tears. Just hiding from all the world. She just wants to hide under the sheets in her little bed, like she used to do when she was a child.

When she gets out of the ice Christa is there for her. But he is nowhere to be seen. She knows that this is it, that she will be shun, disowned, that if before he was at least being quiet, letting the world believe that he was her coach, now he will speak up, get as far from her failures as possible.

* * *

As she packs her things, luggage on her bed, she carefully takes one costume from the wardrobe. It's still in its wrap, it never get off of it, she never had to wear it. Because she never made it to the gala. Who would want to see such a failure? A girl with a fake coach. A girl who let everyone down.

She is quite sure no one wants to see her skate anymore, now that she has let them all down when they most wanted her to shine. Now no one loves her, her skating.

She carefully puts the dress away, sits on the bed next to the open trolley and thinks that this is it, that she should better not skate at all.

What’s the sense of going on anyway?

**Author's Note:**

> This ends with a question, to make it all a little less dark, because we know that, slowly, she found her light again.


End file.
